The Next ‘Law & Order’ Spinoff Is About Hate Crimes

Here’s a fun game to play at parties: Can you name every Law and Order series off the top of your head? It’s pretty tough; there have been a lot of L&O spinoffs. There’s Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial By Jury, Law & Order: LA, Law & Order: True Crime, and, of course, Law & Order: Sheboygan. That one was particularly dark and bleak.

All but that last one were real L&O series. To which series creator Dick Wolf will soon add one more that will make Law & Order: Special Victims Unit look like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Per Deadline, a Law & Order: Hate Crimes has gotten a 13-episode order from NBC:

Co-created with one of Wolf’s top lieutenants, former Law & Order: SVU showrunner Warren Leight, the latest Law & Order installment is based on New York’s actual Hate Crimes Task Force, the second oldest bias-based task force in the U.S. The unit, which pledges to uphold a zero tolerance policy against discrimination of any kind, works under the NYPD’s real Special Victims Unit and often borrows SVU’s detectives to assist in their investigations.

That task force is a very important group of people who I’m glad exist, but I’m not entirely sure I would want to, like, binge-watch six hours of them doing their jobs, investigating the absolute worst people on the planet and the horrible things they try to do. That sounds like the exact opposite of escapism to me. On the other hand, maybe a show about an alternate reality where racists are brought to justice and not allowed to spew venom on Twitter all day long would play really well right now.